Dave Krieger

Krieger: Tim Tebow gets his audition as Broncos' QB of the future

The Great Tebow Debate used to be about logic versus emotion, expertise versus faith. At least, that's how the Broncos saw it.

Now, thanks to Kyle Orton's rapid reversion to the historic Kyle Orton mean, logic has a dinner date with emotion and expertise is working out with faith. Even the Broncos' brain trust is now on the verge of admitting that Tebow is not merely the fans' emotional choice to be their starting quarterback, he's the rational choice too.

This is not to say Tebow will save the Broncos or turn them from a bad team to a good one. It is only to say that it's time to give him a chance. In so doing, the Broncos will put to bed all the hypothetical arguments about what would happen if he got to start. Now we'll see.

John Fox wouldn't tip his hand Monday, explaining he wants to tell the quarterbacks and the rest of the team first, but unless the Broncos are prepared to hire a large mercenary force to defend their headquarters, he's not going to announce they're going back to Orton. His team is 1-4 and Orton is a veteran in the last year of his contract. That option just doesn't make a lot of sense at this point.

That doesn't mean the Broncos were wrong to name Orton the starter out of training camp. His contract status and their willingness to trade him made the decision confusing, but Orton was the team's best quarterback in camp and during the preseason. Coaches will tell you that if they ignored that to name a fan favorite instead, they could have lost the team.

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But NFL players don't earn their jobs once. They earn them every week. Through five weeks of the regular season, Orton now ranks 28th in passer rating out of 32 starting quarterbacks. Tebow didn't win the job so much as Orton lost it.

Many of my most persistent correspondents on this subject claim to have a window into the future, and they see great things for the Broncos with Tebow as their starting quarterback. I envy them. Since making predictions is part of my job, seeing the future would be really useful. Heck, it would be really useful anyway, especially with flights to Vegas as cheap as they are.

Unfortunately, my ability in this area is severely limited. Truthfully, I have no idea whether Tebow's entertainment factor will translate into wins for the Broncos or just more interesting losses. But with the team well on its way to the sinkhole of NFL irrelevance before the trees are bare, starting Tebow now is a win-win, whichever way it works out.

If the Broncos continue to lose with Tebow, they will remain in the race for Stanford quarterback Andrew Luck. I'm on record recommending that they lose the rest of their games in pursuit of this goal, so that would be fine by me.

In fact, it has been pointed out that Broncos executive vice president John Elway saw Luck slice and dice CU at Stanford on Saturday and the Broncos switched to Tebow on Sunday. Coincidence? You make the call.

The problem with this theory, of course, is that Orton's first- half performance against San Diego (passer rating: 21.0) made him the quarterback who gave the Broncos their best chance to lose, if that's what they were looking for.

"As I've said all along, Tim's a very good young quarterback," Fox said Monday.

I'm not sure that's what he's said all along. I know Elway has said all along that Tebow is a good young football player who needs to become a good young quarterback.

In any case, now is the time for him to get an extended audition. Will all his running around get him hurt, as some have predicted? Will his fierce competitiveness lead the Broncos back to glory, as others say? Will the result fall somewhere between these partisan poles?

Now is the time to find out. If the Broncos improve and start winning with Tebow, they will fall out of the race for Luck, but they may decide they already have their quarterback of the future. If they don't, at least they will know what they have.

By season's end, the Broncos need to know if they're going forward with Tebow or somebody else. The 11 games remaining on the schedule should be enough to figure that out.